GA in general Archives

EC takes off elsewhere (but flies beneath our CAA’s crumbling radar)

October 13, 2020

For GA operators flying in uncontrolled airspace, there’s obviously no safety benefit from ADS-B unless your most immediate (and invisible) neighbour also has it installed and running. It’s an open secret that ADS-B was mandated largely for the good of Airways and the airlines (what’s left of them). So it’s hardly surprising to learn that our powers-that-be are doing little, if anything, about a …

The UK’s CAA ‘opinion poll’ that shows Kiwi aviators were years ahead – and a lot smarter

October 8, 2020

Over in the UK, feathers are ruffling about Brexit’s effects on its CAA, and someone calling themselves Sky Lovers has decided to mount a user survey. Here’s the survey link The UK’s messy exit from the EU will have profound effects on its aviation regulator (and on private pilots who fancy a lunch in Le Touquet airport’s legendary restaurant, for example). The first thing …

The old guard said: You toe our line. The new CAA leaders prefer to dip toes in the water

July 25, 2020

In any organisation, the first few months for a new manager can be tricky. On one hand, you must establish a rapport with your team and the stakeholders. You have to create open communication and be accepted as genuine. On the other, you’ve been appointed for a good reason. That reason may be unsettling for some; you are the new broom, here to sweep …

It’s officially true: the CAA is toxic. But will it get a detox?

June 14, 2020

Cast your mind back to 2018 and you may recall the Saga of the CAA Client Satisfaction Survey and how the Authority’s leading lights rubbished the results when the GAA ran a customer survey after the CAA refused to do the job. The Director, Graeme Harris, rejected what GAA supporters said about his Authority after our survey of opinion in 2018 and 2019. His …

$300,000 or more down the drain? A cost analysis of two worthless CAA prosecutions

October 14, 2019

Two prosecutions, in both of which the CAA failed to achieve a criminal conviction, have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, we can reveal. We have already reported the more-than-two-year ordeal of a pilot relentlessly pursued by the authority, all the way to a failed CAA appeal. But soon after we posted that report, we learned about another CAA prosecution with similar circumstances. Once …

The MoT ‘issues’ hotline: An offer you might prefer to refuse

September 10, 2019

Some cautionary words about the Ministry of Transport’s “issues” hotline, claimed as a way for people to provide feedback on the performance and culture of the regulators it oversees: Don’t bank on anonymity. The ministry acknowledges that confidence in New Zealand’s civil aviation system “underpins the substantial social and economic contribution made by the aviation sector”, and we were encouraged when the MoT said …

Another whistleblower points to the inevitable: An investigation of the CAA

In his latest TV3 Newshub coverage of the CAA, reporter Michael Morrah exposes problems within Aviation Security Services, where team leaders are accused of allowing people to board flights with illegal items. It is alleged that bullying, harassment and ineffectual leadership are endemic within the lofty floors of the Asteron Centre, which is expensively occupied by the CAA and its subordinate, Aviation Security (AvSec). …

Two years of private grief, more disgrace for the CAA, massive expense – for what? Nothing.

The case has finally closed on an episode that brought two years of misery to a pilot and piled more shame on a misguided Civil Aviation Authority. The pilot was charged with, and subsequently pleaded guilty to, careless operation of an aircraft. (Among the prosecution evidence in what we’ll call the Go-Pro Case was video footage taken in the cockpit. GAA supporters raised more …

Safety management is a clear and present danger. Why? And who can we blame?

August 10, 2019

We are human and we make mistakes. Mistakes cause accidents. After any aircraft accident, we want to know why. But when there are no witnesses, no survivors, no proof of mechanical failure, recklessness, malice or external interference, the conclusion of an accident report should say: “We may never know what caused it.” Accident investigators are ruthless and forensic; there are historical events, policies, procedures …

The CAA is seriously ill – but how can we tell the relatives?

July 22, 2019

If only we could ask The Average Kiwi to briefly pause and imagine what life would be like if, quite suddenly, all forms of general aviation disappeared. Everything, that is, below commercial airlines. If you could snap your fingers and make it happen, people on the street would realise what quietly and reliably had been going on all around them. Flying in New Zealand …

Category: GA in general